Just finished up my last tournament of 2012 in Valencia. It was the first time I had been to Valencia and the main reason for heading there this year was to be a part of Juan Carlos Ferrero's last professional tournament as he was one of my greatest rivals and closest mates on tour. It was great to be there on court after his last match with the likes of Rafa Nadal and Sergio Garcia. Juan Carlos pretty much did it on, winning the 2003 French Open, three Davis Cup winning teams and reaching World No.1.

The last three tournaments were a positive way for me to finish off the year. I hurt my back during the Davis Cup tie in Germany and wasn't sure weather I would play the last 3 events. In the end I wasn't 100% fit physically but toughed out some grinding wins which helped my ranking as I wasn't defending any points.

Normally the ranking isn't in my mind at all but after missing half of the year through surgery I feel it has been a big effort to get back in the top 100 and also give another young Aussie an opportunity with a Wild Card into the 2013 Australian Open.

So now it is time to get the body right and have a really big pre season physically which was not possible last year due to the foot injury. I am looking forward to starting the new year at the Brisbane International, where I have had the opportunity to play at the arena for Davis Cup and can't wait to get there in January.

Then I am pleased to be going back to Melbourne for the 2013 Kooyong Classic. It will be great preparation getting 3 tough matches against quality opponents on the eve of the Australian Open.
Will keep you posted on how pre season is coming along.

Still very windy here in the Bahamas following a low grade hurricane. It is amazing all the ideas you can come up with to entertain the kids indoors!
I can't believe we are already in October! And I also can't believe my youngest Ava, has turned two! She was very excited for her birthday this year and loves her cards as much as her pressies! Her favourite being the Disney Princess Duplo.

Both Mia and Cruz are doing great! Mia is in grade one at school and Cruz has started (at only 3 years of age) and is Junior Pre K going off each day in his uniform. He is so excited to have made many friends and is having his own play dates on the weekends like Mia! He is still obsessed with sports and is Lleyton's little shadow. He loves being out on the tennis court and hitting golf balls with is Dad - even hanging out at the gym!

Mia's favourite subjects at school are Spanish and art. She has such a fascination for languages and is giving me tutorials on how to speak Spanish having been learning it for the last three years! Her other love is music and playing the piano. The kids certainly keep me very busy and I have had so much fun reading at school and participating in school events such as International Day where the children parade in their country's national costume. Mia was an Australian surf life saver last year and this year was dressed as the gorgeous Bindi Urwin. Cruza was dressed as one of our family favourites - a Wiggle! It is such a great day with many of the parents providing food from around the world for the children to taste.

Each classroom is set up as an embassy and the children have their hand made passports which they get stamped as they visit each classroom and learn some facts about that country. I helped out with the classroom set up as the Australian embassy.

The children learned about kangaroos and koalas, the Opera House and decorated their own boomerangs. Such a fun day and they have it each year! It is amazing how many different countries are represented on the day being an international school.

A busy end of year still to come with lots of celebrations! Mia and Cruz's birthday and of course Christmas.

I am in Kaohsiung, Taiwan with the Davis Cup team preparing to play this Friday. All the preparations have been good from our boys and we are looking to get through this tie and give ourselves a chance for the 2014 world group.

I will be playing the first match against Yang, a guy who made the Australian Open juniors final a few years ago. The court is a very quick hard court and their team will be trying to use that to their advantage.

I will be teaming up with my usual partner, Chris Guccione for the doubles on Saturday also. The guys we are playing actually won a tournament last week so they will have quite a bit of confidence together.

My body is holding up really well at the moment and I am looking forward to four events in the states after this Davis Cup tie.

Australian Lleyton Hewitt has won 28 singles titles in his career, including Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. At age 20, he was the youngest player ever to be ranked No. 1 in the world.

Now 31, Hewitt won his first-round match at the SAP Open on Tuesday, outlasting Blaz Kavcic of Slovenia 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(4). Hewitt shares his thoughts about his day and career.

“Today was an early start. You wake up and have a light breakfast and get ready to have a 25-30 minute warm-up, a light hit. It’s about getting your feet moving and getting a little rhythm out there. I normally like to have at least an hour and a half after you warm up. Getting ready for the match, I listen to music and sort of exercise, warm-up and get focused into that zone.

“Obviously, you go out there to win it. You have to take it one match at a time because there are so many good players out there. The depth of men’s tennis is better than ever, so there are no easy matches. It doesn’t matter what tournament you are in. You have to prepare as well as possible and go out there and give 100 percent.

“My main focus now is Davis Cup and Grand Slams at his stage of my career. But I want to prepare as well as possible for the big tournaments. I want to play as many matches as possible in the smaller events to get ready for the big ones. I always give 100 percent, no matter which tournament I am at.

“I’ve enjoyed coming here. You always enjoy coming back to places where you’ve had good success.”

Well tennis has kicked off again for the year! Lleyton started his season off by playing the Brisbane International, had a win at Kooyong which lead him up to playing the Aussie Open. Never having much luck with the draw he had a tough first round playing Tipsaravic for three tough sets of tennis. Lleyton played incredibly well but Tipsaravic just played too good on the day and won the crucial points. Could have gone either way. Myself and the rest of the team know the match is not over until Lleyton is walking off the court, for if anyone can come back from being down in the match, he can! As disappointing as it was after two months of intense training to prepare for the Grand Slam, Lleyton than felt right at home hopping into the commentary box with Bruce McAvaney and Jim Courier, commentating the mens matches for the rest of the tournament. I have to say unless Lleyton's playing I really don't sit and watch any other matches on tv, but enjoying his commentary so much I couldn't resist but turn it on! I have had so much positive feed back so it's nice to know others are enjoying it also!

Well January has passed and we have headed off overseas. Bit of a climate change going from 40 degrees in Melbourne to the cold weather in San Jose. Kids happy to be on the road again and make their way back to their friends (and school) in The Bahamas!

I am in Poland at the moment and getting ready for another massive Davis Cup tie. If we can find a way to get the job done we will be back in the world group for 2014. Everything is going well over here, all the boys are practicing hard and trying to make the quick adjustments from the hardcourts of New York to the slow clay here in Warsaw. It is always a great atmosphere to be around all your team mates again and having that one common goal. My coach and good mate Peter Luczak was born here in Warsaw so we have brought him along as our translator too!

I was pretty happy overall with my performances in New York. My win over Del Potro in 5 sets back on the largest tennis stage in the world was special and really makes all that hard work coming back from surgeries worth while.
My body is feeling pretty good going into this Davis Cup tie especially considering that I had a few long tough matches in NYC.

After this week I will have a couple of weeks off before playing in Beijing, Shanghai and Vienna. Really looking forward to those 3 tournaments and finishing off the year strongly.

Well 2014 is here! The end of 2013 went by so fast! My kids are all growing up far to quickly - Mia is now eight, Cruz is five and Ava is three! (And I turned the big 30 in July last year!) We've had a busy end of the year. While Lleyton worked hard training for the Australia summer, the kids and I had many activities locked in to make the most of our short time in Australia. Mia was able to continue on with her piano and singing lessons and has now also begun learning guitar. She enjoys all three. She is still always writing songs and actually got to perform one she wrote at her music concert. She loved being on stage and had a massive smile on her face the whole time!

All three kids also had swimming lessons here in Aus. Obviously they love the water growing up in the Bahamas and have always swum unaided due to the amazing Survival Swimming program they did when they were babies. Even Little Miss Ava jumps in off the block and swims whole laps of the 25 meters pool on her own - no floaties.

Cruz is Lleyton's little shadow and follows him everywhere. Very cute story, on boxing day Cruz wanted to hit some serves on the court with Lleyton. He got out a box and the two of them side by side were hitting their "big boy" serves over the net from the base line. Boxing day in Sydney was incredibly hot, so Lleyton suggested they put away the racket and go in out of the heat to which Cruz replied "No, I'm not going in until I've done the whole box!" He is obsessed with tennis!

So happy with the start to 2014! We all couldn't be happier for Lleyton beating Roger Federer to win the Brisbane title as we know how hard he works!

Not long left in Australia and we all head back to the Bahamas and get back into our routine there which of course includes school!
Have a great 2014!

What are you feeding Cruz? Saw him in the cafe at AO and he did not sit still. Completely demolished a plastic water bottle, screwed it up like a cork screw. Still is very cute but one hell of a ball of energy.

Well it is hard to believe the Aussie summer has come and gone. I did a lot of hard work in November and December to get ready for the 2014 season. I was pumped to have played so well in really tough conditions in Brisbane and especially to beat 2 quality players in 3 tough sets in the Semi Final and Final.

It was always going to be a tough grind trying to beat Federer in the final and in the end there was only a couple of points in it. It was a great result for me and my team that have put in so much hard work on and off the court with getting my body right. It was special to win another title on home soil and one that I had never won in Australia before.

I am still disappointed with how the Aussie Open turned out. To lose such a long and tough match in extreme heat was hard to take and especially after fighting so hard to get back in the match and have a match point late in the 5th set. At the end of the day though I know I left everything out on the court that day and sometimes things don't quite fall your way, still not easy to move on from though. Luckily I have had the Davis Cup World Group match to focus on and prepare for this tough tie in France. We know it is going to be a big ask taking down the strong French team but be assured we will be doing everything in our power to try and cause a major upset. This is what we have been playing for, the opportunity to compete against the best countries again.

At this stage my next events will be in Memphis, Delray Beach, then an Exhibition against Berdych in Hong Kong before playing Indian Wells and Miami.

Well it is hard to believe that we are getting ready for another grasscourt season. I have been looking forward to this for the last 11 months - it is one of my favourite times of the year. Arriving early in London and walking into the AELTC as a member and having the privilege to fine tune my preparations on the Aorangi (Wimbledon practice courts) grasscourts is amazing. There is something special about walking through the Wimbledon gates, all the great memories come flooding back. Not only the matches I have been involved in but all the epic encounters I have watched over the years including as a young kid on TV in Adelaide.

I will be starting my campaign in Rosmalen, Holland next week, a place I am looking forward to getting back to. From there it is onto one of my favourite stops, Queens Club. I have had so much success there over the years and hopefully can make a good run there again this year against a stellar field. After that it is the big one, Wimbledon. For me it is the greatest of them all. As a young kid growing up in West Lakes, Adelaide I dreamt of one day playing on that famous hallowed turf at SW19. To think that my name is engraved on the most famous trophy in tennis is something that I am so very proud of. It will be a strange feeling preparing for my last crack at The All England Club but something that I am going to try and enjoy as much as possible.

I feel so fortunate that I can share this great experience with my wonderful wife and three beautiful kids who are old enough to remember it.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Crabby (Jaymon Crabb) for all his hard on court work and Marto (Nathan Martin) for getting me in great shape physically to be able to compete against the best.

Thanks for the support and I cannot wait to get out there for my 17th consecutive Wimbledon.